1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally pertains to the field of electronic commerce and the merging of technology and personal services.
2. Description of the Related Art
E-commerce is traditionally practiced using a personal computer (PC) connected to the Internet and a web browser. Although goods and services providers can offer attractive, practical, efficient and reliable e-commerce via the Internet, a typical end-to-end e-commerce transaction can take several minutes to complete. As there are no dedicated peripherals to speed up the entry of user credentials (which include personal and financial information) and the item chosen, all these details must be entered via the keyboard and mouse.
E-commerce via Internet terminals installed in commercial areas (shopping malls, public areas and the like) is even more laborious, as shoppers (who may not be computer literate) must to slowly enter all of the alpha-numerical information needed to initiate and complete the intended transaction using a keyboard.
Moreover, existing e-commerce methods can leave the consumer wondering whether the online transaction was successfully completed. Sometimes, the user is not sure that the initiated transaction was, in fact, successful until the goods actually show up at the door. A good practice is for the e-commerce provider to send an acknowledgment by sending an email to the user, the email detailing all of the details of the transaction, thereby allowing the user to check on the status of the order. First rate e-commerce sites such as Amazon.com have refined the process in order to provide an excellent quality of service that almost everyone has come appreciate and trust. For example, the “1-click” purchase model patented by Amazon.com considerably speeds up the purchase of items for already registered users, and the user need not wait online for a confirmation that the credit card payment was accepted. Easy account access allows the user to check the status of his or her order and the delivery status thereof. Every change either made by the user or by the provider is automatically acknowledged in an email message posted to the user.
Interestingly, the Amazon.com website, probably the most recognized B2C (business-to-consumer) model is not directly applicable to Internet information kiosks, and as of the date of this filing, there is no well suited model successfully in operation.
Removing the issue of bad or non-payment, such a transactional model for executing an online transaction is essentially biased in favor of the provider, in that the provider always knows whether the purchase request is valid or is invalid. In contrast, the shopper may have doubts as to the success of his or her purchase request until such time as an explicit acknowledgment is provided, which may not occur until a quite a significant time after the online order has been submitted (which is wholly unsuited to the manner in which public-access Internet terminals are used). Typically, the acknowledgment is supplied as a displayed message, a printed receipt or an email. This is because e-commerce servers are not optimized to provide an instantaneous (or near instantaneous) acknowledgment, especially when a clearing bank is involved in validating a credit card purchase.
Consequently, because of this lack of a successful e-commerce transactional model, public access Internet kiosks used to conduct e-commerce are currently unknown.